One of the most invigorating sensations is sleeping the first night in clean sheets. If these sheets were hung outside to dry in the natural elements of wind and sun, you wake up in the morning smelling as if you bathed in sunshine. Truly, one of the simple pleasures of life is the smell of line-dried clothes, towels, and sheets. It’s almost enough to make you consider air-drying your laundry as a rule. This practice might also make you reflect on the economic and environmental benefits it could bring to your life.
The Environmental and Economic Benefits of Air-Drying Laundry
Today, the newest way to gauge an appliance’s energy efficiency is by its Energy Star rating. The United States Government even gives homeowners who purchase an Energy Star certified appliance the ability to write it off on taxes. However, look at this statement from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA)! According to them, “the average household dryer consumes 1,079 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, which amounts to 2,224 pounds of carbon dioxide. If every US household let one load of laundry air-dry, 250,000 tons of CO2 could be saved. This is equivalent to shutting down 15 nuclear power plants or cutting back coal use by 30 million tons each year.”
National Geographic has devised something called the Great Energy Challenge, which encourages homeowners to identify where they are spending the most energy. One of the first things you’ll notice is that air-drying your laundry, as an alternative to using the energy-draining clothes dryer, is one of the easiest ways for any household to go green and save money. The appliances we use for convenience are not without cost, and many of them, like the dryer, have significant environmental consequences over time. If every household in the world gave up their dryer, the Earth’s atmosphere would experience an immediate and long-lasting eco-change, benefiting every living thing.
There are additional benefits to air-drying your laundry as well. One of the main advantages is that your clothes will last longer. Most modern fabrics are not designed to withstand the high heat of today’s fast-operating clothes dryers. Consider that you’re only a few degrees shy of setting your clothes on fire. The heat from the dryer causes fabrics to wear down more quickly, meaning you’ll need to replace them more often. Maybe this is why clothes lasted longer decades ago when most people didn’t own a clothes dryer. You know that fuzz and lint you pull off the filter after every load? That’s actually small bits and pieces of your clothes being torn apart thread by thread as they tumble dry. Think the gentle cycle will help? It might a little, but it takes about twice as long, which could increase your electric bill by around 22% per year.
Having clothes that wear out less quickly is definitely a bonus. However, a “going green” survey on CNN indicated that even if clothes didn’t wear out, most people would not keep their garments past the year mark, replacing them due to fashion rather than need. Still, wouldn’t it be great if that favorite sweatshirt and your bath towels could see you through to retirement?
Environmentally speaking, dryer accessories, like dryer sheets used to make your laundry smell better and reduce static electricity, are an environmental hazard that is released into the atmosphere daily by millions of people who use dryers.
Okay, so you’re still not convinced, and you love the way your dryer makes your clothes look so neat. Plus, it’s easier, right? Well, here are a few more arguments in favor of air-drying your clothes:
Effort: Hanging clothes on a line and pulling them off is no more strenuous than emptying a washer, putting the wet clothes in, and folding them when they come out.
Static cling: It’s actually caused in the dryer. Air-drying your laundry means no static cling.
Air drying is free.
Of course, there are drawbacks. Depending on where you live, you may not have the perfect outdoor weather conditions to dry your laundry properly. In the wintertime, you risk frozen clothes, and if you don’t have a basement, you likely don’t want clothes piling up in your kitchen. Air-drying does take longer than using a dryer. However, if you don’t need the clothes right away, hanging them on the line might be a great solution for larger items like sheets, towels, and comforters. Even just air-drying those items would bring you some economic and environmental benefits.
While it’s true that most people don’t and wouldn’t consider air-drying their laundry on a routine basis, we all have a role to play in being environmentally conscious. You can contribute to both the environment and your electric bill by making small changes, like air-drying your towels, and see big results. Sometimes, it’s not just about saving money, but also about what we can do for our planet.
